04.15 After a few photo opps the crew are now being transferred to the medical tent to change from their launch and entry suits and undergo some medical screenings and then the final leg of the journey to their respective homes.

04.06 Just to recap for those just getting up, or putting off going to bed, the mission to bring the three men back down to earth today went like clockwork, a Soyuz space capsule carrying an international crew has landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Roman Romanenko of the Russian space agency landed as planned southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8:31 a.m. local time following a-146 day mission to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TMA-07M capsule slowly descending by parachute on the sun-drenched steppes under clear skies. Russian search and rescue helicopters were hovering around the landing site for a quick recovery effort.

A three-man U.S.-Russian crew is staying on the space station to be joined in two weeks by the next trio of astronauts.

04.02 They've been on the ground half an hour and they've finally pulled Commander Hadfield out of the capsule. He looks shattered but there's a big thumbs up and smile for the camera so he's happy.

03.56 It's a tight squeeze inside the Soyuz capsule.

We're still waiting for Commander Hadfield to be pulled out. The other members of the crew are all smiles as they have a well earned cup of tea.

03.50 Roman Romanenko and Thomas Marshburn have been helped out of the capsule looking understandably shaky-legged but otherwise fine. Now being checked over by medical staff.

03.32 THEY HAVE LANDED. All safe and sound. Commander Hadfield and his crew have touched down safely in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz capsule. Soft fire engines engaged perfectly so it landed upright. The Local recover forces are now extracting the crew...

03.30 Didn't catch who it was but one of the crew's words were just translated as: "It's beautiful, it's morning here..."

03.25 Parachutes are open. Descent is being slowed to 7.2metres/second. Search and recovery vehicles, on the ground and in the air, are ready for touchdown as the crew seem relaxed with everythign going exactly as planned so far.

03.10 Successful separation of the modules is confirmed and on time and we are less than 25 minutes now away from the scheduled touch down in Kazakhstan. They are 90 miles above the earth just now.

03.05 The night sky sees the discarded segments of the capsual blaze with the main segment where the crew are continuing its descent.

Worth following, as well as watchign the NAsa live feed above, is Jeremy Hansen, a former CF-18 fighter pilot and Canadian Astronaut.

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: Jeremy R. Hansen - The manual entry mode is hand flown by Cmdr. Rolling the capsule left and right with offset centre of gravity, can ctrl G forces &amp;amp; accuracy&lt;/noframe&gt;

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: Jeremy R. Hansen - Final backup mode is ballistic.Capsule rolls constantly, capsule will land safe but way off Tgt and over 9X force of gravity. Sporty!&lt;/noframe&gt;

02.50 Everything is going as planned on the descent so far, one of the ground control crew offering the not unreasonable advice to the crew in Soyuz to "drink some wine" when the mission is complete.

Earlier, as thy prepared to leave the International Space Station, Comander Hadfield told flight contollers: "It's just been an extremely fulfilling and amazing experienced."

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Not long now until Commander touches down on terra firma for the first time in almost 150 days. His Soyuz capsual has successfully separated and he and his crew are on their way down.

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: CanadianSpaceAgency - The Soyuz w/ &lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield" target="_blank"&gt;@Cmdr_Hadfield&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; crew has separated from the &lt;a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=ISS" target="_blank"&gt;#ISS&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; is set to land @ 10:31pm EDT. Will be streamed here: &lt;a href="http://t.co/IsXy759hTm" target="_blank"&gt;http://t.co/IsXy759hTm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/noframe&gt;

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Commander Hadfield, 53, closed the hatch of the International Space Station at 3.50pm EDT (8.50pm BST). He will then undergo the undocking around 7.09pm (12.09am BST), before landing back in Earth around 10.31pm EDT.

Cmdr Hadfield, who has spent the last five months aboard the International Space Station has acquired almost 850,000 Twitter followers (his handle is @Cmdr_Hadfield) during his stay in orbit.

On Monday, he updated his followers as he was making preparations for the undocking, as well as thanking everyone at the Canadian Space Agency. He is due to return to Earth with American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko.

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: Chris Hadfield - Reviewing Soyuz procedures onboard, but I wanted to thank every person at the Cdn Space Agency. Your work takes Canada into orbit. Be proud.&lt;/noframe&gt;

In his last Tweet before heading into the hatch, he took a photograph of a new dawn on Earth.

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: Chris Hadfield - Spaceflight finale: To some this may look like a sunset. But it's a new dawn. &lt;a href="http://t.co/iVgyUihqEN" target="_blank"&gt;http://t.co/iVgyUihqEN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/noframe&gt;

Spaceflight finale: To some this may look like a sunset. But it's a new dawn from @Cmdr_Hadfield

Little-known before he set off, Cmdr Hadfield, who is married with three children, used his time orbiting Earth to upload video diaries, songs and photos to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Reddit in an effort to boost interest in space exploration and help introduce it to a new generation.

He celebrated his final hours on board the space station to record his take on David Bowie's "Space Oddity".

The music video shows Cmdr Hadfield floating inside the space station while playing his guitar.

&lt;noframe&gt;Twitter: Chris Hadfield - With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. &lt;a href="http://t.co/DMnMc8qC7f" target="_blank"&gt;http://t.co/DMnMc8qC7f&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/noframe&gt;

As he sings "Here I am sitting in a tin can far above the world," the Earth can be seen glowing outside the space station's windows.

At one point he sings "And I'm floating in a most peculiar way" while in mid-air.

He is the first Canadian to command the space station and its six staff. His time onboard included an unexpected space walk to fix a coolant leak. On Sunday he handed over control to Russian Pavel Vinogradov.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield handed over command of the International Space Station to Russia's Pavel Vinogradov on Sunday, ahead of his expedition team's return to Earth.

They must ensure the space station runs smoothly and stays in the correct orbit, while also making small adjustments should it be threatened by a piece of passing space junk. They must also ensure all the life support systems and cooling arrays are in good working order.

Primarily, however, the crew of Expedition 35, as they are known, have been taking advantage of the space stations microgravity environment to carry out new research.